Living in a Lifetime Ago
by RainingFlowers
Summary: Sirius, post-Azkaban. One-shot Drabble. "And then she had stared at me and blinked and smiled, and several bottles of firewhiskey later and her lips were on mine and our bodies were together and my hands were in her hair..."


**A/N:** Hi. Surprise.

**Disclaimer:** Not mine.

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The sex was great and the company was wonderful. She could make me laugh like _(almost)_ no other, even after I thought I'd never be able to laugh ever again _(days and weeks and years in that hellhole with no company but the nightmares)_. She was one of the only few who made me feel alive once more, and once I never even thought she'd look in my direction. James was the one so obviously infatuated with a girl in school, and everybody and their cousins knew about him and Lily and his attempts at impressing her and then when they finally got together. Nobody suspected that I was just as infatuated, just with somebody else. I tried playing hard-to-get, womanising like there was no tomorrow, but managed to forget that in order to be able to make her jealous, I had to first let her know that I was interested. And so I went out with half the female population of Hogwarts and she never even batted an eyelid in my direction.

All of that seems like such a lifetime ago. _(An entire lifetime and a trip to hell.)_

And the irony _(oh, the irony)_ was that she never even knew until she joined. We'd dated casually after Hogwarts, me being too cowardly to let her know exactly what she meant to me. And even then, especially then, when we were young _(and alive and unhaunted)_, the sex was spectacular. But sex and dating _(and love, but never love, ever)_ fell by the wayside as the war escalated, and I barely even saw her until...afterwards _(after the darkness and the nightmares and the memories and never being able to return)_. So she never knew how I felt, and she thought for thirteen years that I killed all those people. She never knew about James and Lily and the Fidelius until she sought out Dumbledore herself, asking to join in the fight she knew he must be preparing, even if the world called him mad and paranoid. _(Paranoid and second-guessing and ruining everything with one clever stupid idea fifteen years ago...)_

And so he took her to Grimmauld Place and introduced her to me with that damn glittering in his eyes that said he knew full well we already knew each other _(from a lifetime ago)_, and Moony, sneaky Marauding wolf that he is, excused himself politely to go to the library. And so we were left staring gormlessly at each other, and in a desperate attempt to fill the silence and ignore how heavily my heart was beating _(a sign of such long-lost _life_) _I started talking, babbling about anything, really, from the weather to the things that the Order was doing to try and stop Voldemort, and somehow, _somehow_, somewhere in the kitchen between the transition from butterbeer to firewhiskey, or perhaps causing it, I managed to let slip that I loved her and had loved her ever since that first Transfiguration lesson when she had somehow done a Switching charm on her matchstick and James' hair. And then she had stared at me and blinked and _smiled_, and several bottles of firewhiskey later and her lips were on mine and our bodies were together and my hands were in her hair and _her_ hands were doing what no hands should be allowed to do.

That first night had been...difficult. Different. Nobody ever really anticipates how sitting _(rotting and wasting away)_ in a cell impacts upon those particular instincts, and for me it'd been over a third of my life. Twelve years when I hadn't even been able to think, even slightly, in that direction _(Caught in a battle to survive against the shadows and the darkness everywhere)_. But afterwards she held me and comforted me against the nightmares and remembered with me. And then there were more nights, after that, more living and being alive with each other.

She never took it all away, of course, nothing could ever do that. But she helped me fight back. She made me feel like my life was worth living once more in those lulls when loneliness and darkness threatened to come crashing down, and eased back the tears and screams of the past with the gentle touch of skin on skin amongst warm blankets and pillows. I don't know if what we had ever reached true love. I do, however, like to think that there is, and always will be, a part of my heart that is hers, and I hope that she has the same for me.

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A/N:** So this was written (you guessed it) at some bizarre hour of the morning when I should've been asleep. It's not ideal, not in the slightest...it's sort of like wish fulfilment, but more just the product of far too many late nights reading. To be honest, it was written more for me than for everyone else, but hey. Sharing it anyway. And in the process of writing this, I realised that I'm sort of losing it. Or rather, my writing's the same it always was, I'm just far more critical of it. But hey, I turned my back on writing a while ago, yet still I'm pushing out these pointless little drabbles every once in a blue moon. Go figure. Feel free to review.


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